Remote Education: Sheffield Brightside and Hillsborough

(asked on 15th January 2021) - View Source

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many laptops have been requested by schools in Sheffield Brightside and Hillsborough constituency during the January 2021 covid-19 lockdown to date; and how many laptops have been allocated to those schools.


Answered by
Nick Gibb Portrait
Nick Gibb
This question was answered on 21st January 2021

The Government is investing over £400 million to support access to remote education and online social care services, including securing 1.3 million laptops and tablets for disadvantaged children and young people. The Government is providing this significant injection of devices on top of an estimated 2.9 million laptops and tablets already owned by schools before the start of the COVID-19 outbreak.

On 12 January, the Department announced that it will be providing a further 300,000 devices over the course of this term. The Get Help with Technology scheme will email all schools with information on the number of additional devices allocated to them, and when they will be able to order.

The number of devices available for each school, academy trust or local authority is based on children eligible for free school meals and takes into account existing devices available in schools. Schools, academy trusts and local authorities are responsible for distributing the laptops and tablets and are best placed to know which disadvantaged children and young people need access to a device.

Figures on the number of devices delivered is available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/laptops-tablets-and-4g-wireless-routers-progress-data. These figures are broken down by local authority and academy trust. Information on delivery by constituency is not available.

Laptops and tablets provided under the Get Help with Technology scheme meet defined technical specifications to enable remote education and allow for use in schools and colleges. Information on devices specifications is published at: https://get-help-with-tech.education.gov.uk/devices/device-specification.

Details of the contracts for this programme are available at: https://www.gov.uk/contracts-finder, in line with normal Government commercial practice. Information on the proportion of each contract that has been fulfilled is not available.

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